TMC leader arrested for murder of Mamata’s close aide in Malda

Kolkata: A senior leader of the ruling Trinamool Congress has been arrested in Malda in West Bengal for allegedly masterminding the murder of another local heavyweight of the ruling party itself.

Six days after Dulal Sarkar, a TMC member of the English Bazar Municipality in Malda, was shot dead by three men, West Bengal police on Wednesday arrested Narendra Nath Tiwari, a local leader of the ruling party itself, for allegedly playing a key role in plotting the murder.

Tiwari, the president of the TMC committee for Malda Town, allegedly hired the murderers, who shot Sarkar, one of the close associates of the party supremo and Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, in close range at Jhaljhalia Mor area in Malda on January 2.

The police arrested three men soon after the murder on the same day and two more the next day. With the arrest of Tiwari and another man on Wednesday, the number of persons in the custody of the police in connection with the murder went up to seven.

“The arrested men have revealed during interrogation that the conspirators had given Rs 50 lakh to the assailants to carry out the crime,” Supratim Sarkar, Additional Director General of Police (South Bengal), said on Wednesday. He said that the investigators would soon find the motive of the murder.

An old rivalry between Tiwari and Sarkar led to the murder, police sources said.

The cops are also looking for two more men, allegedly involved in plotting the murder.

Banerjee, herself, had expressed shock over the killing of Sarkar, whom she described as a popular leader, who had worked hard for the Trinamool Congress since the inception of the party.

The TMC supremo had also conveyed her displeasure over the failure of the police to provide the councillor adequate security although he had survived murder attempts in the past too.

The CCTV footage showed the assailants chasing Sarkar, the vice president of the TMC district unit in Malda, into a shop and shooting him dead.